Old timers: did the release of Civ 4 bring such rage?

[the Wahoo boy]

So what is your opinion? Me myself I disliked the ******** design of Civ4. It looked childish and unprofessional 2 me, unlike the pretty damn awesome design of Civ3.

Anyway, take your pick.

 

[bjbrains]

There's a post on this forum which should give you an idea.

Short answer: Yes.

People raged over maintenance, the AI, the game being buggy, the Multiplayer not working right, how 'stupid' religion was, the removal of attack/defense, and how dumbed down the game was...

Yea, every release for a series with this level of hardcore fandom is going to get this kind of "But this isn't Civ 4.1?" stuff.

 

[Riderforlife13]

Yes, it brought a lot of rage because launch was horrible. Lots or cds were missing files or had corrupted and wouldn't play and they had to wait a day or two for a patch just to play the game. The game disk was labeled wrong and to play you had to use disk 1 instead of disk 2 and other various problems, so yes, it was this bad or worse.

 

[May Day 10]

personally I thought Civ IV was great. However, I couldnt continue a game once I built my first wonder as the game/cpu would freeze with the video.

 

[Aegis]

The game disk was labeled wrong and to play you had to use disk 1 instead of disk 2 and other various problems, so yes, it was this bad or worse.

Oh god, I forgot about that!

 

[Riderforlife13]

I remembered because I was depressed thinking I hate to wait for the patch to play only to find out I was using the wrong disk. After that, everything worked fine, well, ok, there were still a few problems like the wonder freeze!

 

[Zadox]

Yes, Civ4 launch was pretty bad along with all of the programming issues. Personally, I'm counting on Mod designers to make the desired changes to the look/feel that most here are complaining about.

 

[4nGeLuS]

Yes, there were a lot of complaints when Civ IV launched. Some were gameplay related but a lot were related to technical difficulties. For instance, a lot of people couldn't get the game to start because of some rendering issue. See this old thread for that discussion:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133003
It was the issue that made me come out of the lurker shadows and register a username. I quickly receded into the darkness after the issue was resolved, though.

 

[Tomice]

I can't say anything about civ4's release, but this behaviour is typical for releases in general (seen it with ME2 and SC2, for example).

It's the "vocal minority" problem. If only 1% of the CFC members start rage threads, it seems like everybody hates the game. If you look closely, most of the thread starters are people with very few posts, it's not the core fanbase revolting, it's just some very loud and vocal few.

I really doubt many here understand the game enough yet to win on anything from prince upwards, which would give them some right to complain. Most started ranting after only one game. Most "disappointed posters" lack any skill in argumentation and are just grumblers in my eyes.

If some well-known, respected forumite like Arioch, Mercade, TMIT or The_J would complain or someone else would just thoughtfully explain his cause, it would be totally different, but this has no meaning and makes no sense.

 

[r_rolo1]

TMIT , being a beta tester, can't complain openly even if he has reasons for it ( and everyone knows how he complains when he feels to ). The_J is a mod, so he can't complain in rage mode even if to not ban himself

On topic: to be honest, this so far is even being more civilized than it was when civ IV came out ( in that time I was a lurker ). This will probably get less loud, but more serious with the time .. there are surely real issues with the game ( but atleast so far nothing like the uberlags of Civ IV 1.00 in some comps ( my oldie 2003 desktop at the time was one of the victims ) ) and those will give bitter discussions.

And OFC there will be people complaining of the graphs until civ VI gets out, in the same way there is still people complaining of the ballon-head gandhi and the waving banana trees of Civ IV ...

P.S Count on me to complain if I feel to when the game gets out in here

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

The Old Ones have spoken!

 

[Lillefix]

Not surprisingly, there are fewer "it's 3d so it's impossible to make graphic mods"-threads this time.

 

[TheArsenal]

I can't say anything about civ4's release, but this behaviour is typical for releases in general (seen it with ME2 and SC2, for example).

Yep. Or the Total War series for that matter (which had some admittedly buggy releases). The most amusing/interesting times to hang around any game forum is right before/after a launch because one could almost take posts from other forums during game releases, change a few words, and they would fit on any board. Granted, I haven’t played every game, but in my experience even the best loved games suffer Release Day Rage.

 

[r_rolo1]

Not surprisingly, there are fewer "it's 3d so it's impossible to make graphic mods"-threads this time.

Will probably be replaced by "it is virtually impossible to make decent full body leaders in 3D"

 

[alpaca]

Does anyone remember the memory leak issues in Civ4 1.0?

I don't have it yet but from the demo it seems like Civ5 is at least more stable than Civ4, even though MP game modes and such are missing. I see some design issues but meh, they will always be there.

 

[r_rolo1]

Does anyone remember the memory leak issues in Civ4 1.0?

I don't have it yet but from the demo it seems like Civ5 is at least more stable than Civ4, even though MP game modes and such are missing. I see some design issues but meh, they will always be there.

I do remember I would prefer not to

And yes, the game seems more stable than civ IV at release....

 

[zarakand]

Yes, it brought a lot of rage because launch was horrible. Lots or cds were missing files or had corrupted and wouldn't play and they had to wait a day or two for a patch just to play the game. The game disk was labeled wrong and to play you had to use disk 1 instead of disk 2 and other various problems, so yes, it was this bad or worse.

Haha. I had forgotten about that! Yep, I hated Civ IV for the first two-three games. I hated my first 2 games of Civ V.

Now I'm in my 3rd game, and understand a lot of the basics and loving it. It's a very different game from Civ IV, and quite enjoyable once I stopped expecting it to be Civ IV.

 

[dirtforker]

IMO most people are upset because they're wondering why they can't click the same buttons they did before and win automatically like they did with Civ IV (and with Civ III before it...)

 

[Al-Iskander]

My guess is that all the happy people are playing the game (like I will be again when my graphics card driver finishes updating), and are therefore too busy to complain

 

[RagnorIronpants]

I thought it was alright, but it didn't knock Alpha Centauri off the top spot (where it remains, IMO). The first patches immediately made it better - I remember being really angry at how short the eras were, but marathon was introduced in an early patch and it solved the problem and made the game more to my liking. It wasn't until the vassal system was introduced in Warlords that I really started to love the game, and it wasn't until BtS that I decided it was second to SMAC.

I've only played the demo, but I'm a little ambivalent about V at the moment. Once I've had a day of eating quesadillas and playing a full game on a large map I'll have a better idea, but from my limited experience so far I basically feel the same as I felt about IV back in the first week it was out - that the cool additions don't quite outweigh the simplifications. But I also trust Firaxis will bring out good add-ons that significantly expand the game, because they're reliable developers.

But that faith doesn't mean I don't have fond memories of when I bought SMAC, which was as rich and complex as IV was only after BtS 3.17. As a point of principle I don't think games should simplify - I doubt there were production notes being passed around the Godfather Part II saying "let's make it as streamlined an experience as possible this time". But I also have high hopes for the patches and add-ons, so I'm not gonna whine about it - unless they turn out to be rubbish, of course, then I'm gonna whine loads.